


no blooms in winter

by ahala



Category: Julius Caesar - Shakespeare, Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hanahaki Disease, Love Confessions, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Sickfic, Unrequited Love, i love atticus so much its unreal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahala/pseuds/ahala
Summary: brutus has hanahaki disease and his days are coming to an end. or, brutus would sooner die than admit he has emotions
Relationships: Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	1. you, soft and only

**Author's Note:**

> I know the posting of a Hanahaki fic is a bit untimely given our present circumstances, but I've been working on this in bits and pieces for a few months and there are no allegorical or literal references in this fic to.....that.

A cold sludge runs down the hills of Rome with a consistency that has not slowed even though the rain began days ago. It melds the unsavory ingredients of the city together as the grey sky presses down against streets. An early pestilence creeps on the cold breeze, winding through the tight cracks and crevices between buildings, between people, between soul and body. Antony is used to the cold now, but he shivers from the inside out. The dark months are a miserable time for all. The urban claustrophobia and reek make Antony long for Gaul again, even though he had been saying the opposite not but a week before. 

His gait quickens for home, now unsure why he even left the house in the first place as a cold, dry wind whips him. He is so preoccupied with his desire for the hearth that he almost lets the voice be drowned out by his thoughts and the wintry gusts. 

“Soldier?”

He almost thinks that he’s made it up until he sees the girl in the adjacent alleyway, her gaze so unabashed it seems untoward. “Yes?”

“Marcus Antonius?”

“I answer to that, too.” She gestures for him to come over and he does. 

“I hear your lot has just come back from the north. I don’t know if news travels to the edge of the empire, so I feel inclined to tell you that Marcus Brutus has fallen quite ill.” 

Antony fixes the girl with an uneasy gaze. “Why is it any of my concern?”

“Well, I thought you might want to know.” The girl shrugs, feigning nonchalance before she lifts her chin with an untrusting severity, the crown of ruddy, intricate braids on her head tilting up from under her veil. “I’m Iunia Tertia, daughter of Iunius Silanus.”

“Oh,” Antony says, and suddenly notes the similarity, wondering why he didn’t notice before. Her brunette hair has a stain of Servilian red, the freckles on her cheeks identical to the ones that age and buttermilk scrubbed out of Brutus’s, though the hue of her brown eyes is out of place given her supposed parentage. Her cheekbones are high, her nose aquiline, and her height gangly beyond what her pubescent age would dictate. “Isn’t that unfortunate. What do you want?”

“My brother needs to speak with you.”

Antony smiles crookedly. “ _ He _ sent you?”

“I sent myself.”

“He doesn’t know about this, then.” His eyes gleam.

“No, he doesn’t. But it is of the utmost importance that you go to him right now.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, squirt. I don’t want to see him just yet.” Deep wounds took time to heal, and time away in the misery of Gaul was still not enough to soothe old abrasions.

“Why not?” She demands. 

“It’s the principle of the thing. I’m not really game to have some unqualified idiot ordering me around so soon again. And besides, I don’t need to listen to you,” Antony shrugs and goes to walk out of the alley. Tertulla steps to the side, blocking his path.

“He’s coughing up flowers,” Tertulla insists, her voice a whisper, careful to make sure no pricked ears are listening, wanting to hear what they shouldn’t.

It’s enough to make Antony hesitate. A curious expression crosses his face for a moment, some sign of inner contention. “Is that so?” His lips contort into a savage grin. He huffs a laugh and rolls his eyes. “Who for?”

“Isn’t that the question of the day.”

“Well, you’ve no reason to worry. He’ll never profess his dying love to whatever poor sod is the object of his....affections.”

“That’s precisely why I’m worried,” she snaps, glaring at him. “And why you need to go talk sense into him”

“As much as I’m sure he wants to die because of this, you and I both know he won’t. I bet that he’s already talked to his physician and given him a great fraction of the Junii fortune to cut the weed out of him, and those execrable feelings with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked the doc how to cut the rest of the emotions out of him as well.” 

“Then he’s a fool for thinking that’s the right solution here.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying for years.” 

“Just go talk to him.”

“I said I’m not going to, and I mean it. Brutus can sort himself out if he wants to.”

She steels her face, glaring at him. “Go see him, or I’ll scream.” Antony considers it for a moment. It would be very incriminating and easily spun out of proportion through gossip and a prime opportunity by his adversaries to tear him down. A battle-weary and half-savage soldier just returned from Gaul found in an alleyway standing over a screaming upper-class rugrat who just so happens to be the half-sister of the deathly ill Marcus Brutus. Cicero would have a field day and not even Caesar could save him from that. And yet, Tertulla would have to justify her absence from home, found alone in the alleyways of the Aventine with no sign of any struggle or aversion to her person. She would never take the risk to her own dignity and the dwindling dignity of her name. 

Antony chuckles as he leans down to face her eye to eye. “You’re bluffing. Look at that,” he brushes the crease of her pursed lips with his finger. “It’s the Aventine; nobody’s going to give a shit about a screaming girl. Nice try, though.”

“ _ Am _ I bluffing?” Tertulla says evenly. “Is that a chance you want to take, sir? You have much more to lose than I do.”

“Listen carefully, you little patrician chit,” he snaps. “If the thought of seeing your uptight brother even crossed my mind before, I would now deliberately not do that.”

Offended, Tertulla’s youthful face sours, her frown deepening with resolve. Her fists ball at her side as she takes in a deep breath and lets out a splitting shriek in Antony’s face.

A servant answers the door. Antony doesn’t make any conversation and silently walks himself through the familiar path of halls to the master bedroom. He hesitates at the door before letting himself in without knocking. The bedroom is dark and cool, the curtains blowing in the room on the cold breeze moaning through the streets and alleys of Rome. Rainwater sparkles on the ledge, dripping onto the floor. A bowl of bone broth sits on his bedside table, entirely untouched, the faintest trails of steam rising off of it. Brutus is facing the other way from it, curled on his side, covers pulled up as far as they can go without asphyxiating him. His face, or what little Antony can see of it, is sallow, even more so from the dim light of the cloudy day and black drapes. His eyes move beneath his eyelids, and Antony knows he isn’t really sleeping. 

“What are you doing here?” He doesn’t open his eyes. His voice is rough and strained, the simple question leaving him breathless and breathing hard. 

“Your sister said that I should visit you.”

“Which one?”

“Do you need to ask?”

He grunts contemplatively. An uneasy passage of silence extends between the two of them before he speaks again. “What do you want?”

“Well, I wanted to get your sister to leave me alone.”

He opens his eyes with a wince and looks toward Antony. “And now that you have?” 

“I’m here to find out what is so sensational that I come and see. I’ve just gotten back from seeing hundreds of men die, some of plague, and I don’t know why I’ve been forced to see one more.”

“Of course, blame your militaristic shortcomings on me. I’m sorry you were outsmarted for a whole winter by a band of halfwits,” he croaks, rolling his rheumy eyes. 

Antony chuckles, rolling his shoulders and glancing out the window for a moment before his gaze returns to rest on Brutus. “Don’t play ‘Cicero’ with me; it looks so ugly on you.”

Brutus shrugs. “I’m not playing anything. I’m simply telling the truth.”

“So tell me why I’m here . And with less of that Iunius sugar; I've already suffered enough by your sister.” Antony cannot tell if the ripple across Brutus’s lips is a grimace or the makings of a smile as he leans over, heavy bedcovers relenting under his will, taking the glass of water on the bedside table and drinking shallowly from it, sipping carefully. His throat flexes with every swallow and a wince to accompany it. When he rests his hands on his stomach, the glass still in his grasp, he pants quietly, settling before he speaks. 

“I’m having an operation soon. It’s a rather drastic procedure, but I believe it is my only chance to get rid of this illness while I still have an option to. My friends say that I am right to be afraid, but still, some part of me is ashamed that I am. If I am to survive, I will, but if not, then so be it. I have made my decision, and I cannot control anything more than that. If anything, that should comfort me,” his words fade off with the rasp of his voice, and he punctuates his thought with a few weak coughs. The soft tissue of a silken flower petal teases his throat and he coughs harder and harder. He reaches for the pail, frail hands shaking, and spits into it, dry heaving once as he pants hard. Once he recovers, he sets the pail at his bedside once more and leans back into his pillow. Brutus gives a great wheezing sigh from his chest, and a few petals escape him, fluttering into the air and landing gently on his bed. He hardly reacts, putting a cool hand to his burning head.

“So it’s true,” Antony murmurs under his breath.

Brutus ignores him. “I suppose my sister has it in her head that this somehow involves you, and that, if we spoke, it might put me at some sort of ease.”

“And?”

“Truly, I am more afraid now.”

Antony nods his head slowly, more somber and considerable than Brutus ever thought within his capacity. “Echo’s disease, is it?” Everyone knows the tale, it’s pitiful end with a man in love with himself, a nymph with unheard declarations of love and a breast full of narcissus blooms. It wasn’t an uncommon illness, striking young people with loving hearts and no courage to admit it, prostitutes whose adoration went beyond what they were paid, slaves who wanted what the law would not permit. Still, despite its frequency, it was an affliction shrouded in mystery, punctuated by death and ruin. 

“It is.”

“Bad business.” Antony strokes the stubble on his cheeks, too busy and too cold to have shaved it. Briefly, he remembers Brutus’s soft patrician fingers stroking his clean-shaven face in the hazy peach mornings when grogginess tried to excuse amorous touches that had nothing to do with sex. Now Brutus’s fingers twist between each other idly, panicking, muffling his coughs and nearly choking on the flowers. “Brutus,” Antony says. He looks up at him like a child about to be admonished. “Why did your sister tell me to come see you?”

He mutters under breath, “I ought to keep a better eye on her.” He adds, louder, “She and I were somewhat close before I fell ill and I know she isn’t taking this well. She’s young and stupid, but I did not think she was so  foolish as to think that _you_ could help anything at all.”

“Don’t avoid the question.”

Brutus glances past Antony at the fresco on the wall. Juno stares back at him harshly. He tries to sigh and it only triggers a choked cough, wet with blood. He swallows hard and composes himself as well as he can, struggling to retain his dignity before he throws it in the wind to scatter and disappear like flower petals. “Unfortunately, I’m in love with you, Antony. I don’t know quite when I came to feel that way for you, but it snuck up on me so suddenly, I can only assume I have fostered these emotions for quite some time. I fear I always will, for the rest of my life, whatever that amounts to.” A cough steals the breath from Brutus’s lungs and he curls in on himself, convulsing as he hacks and coughs uncontrollably. It takes him a moment until he is reduced to loud, rasping pants as he settles back down, still wiping blood and phlegm into his handkerchief. He cannot bear to meet Antony’s gaze, who is sure to be looking upon him with disgust or distress, or perhaps even delight. 

“Why didn’t you say anything before? Why didn’t you write to me?”

Brutus swallows heavily, wincing at the rawness of his throat. “There was nothing for me to do,  so I did nothing.” They both knew that some glorious end of true love united unabashedly and fully was not within their lifetimes. And any future between them at all was sure to be contentious and devoid of all love. Brutus never saw a point in entertaining that fantasy. Antony's heart was torn between anger and elation, tied together with a perpetual frustration at their differences in expression. It felt too little too late for Antony to ignore what had happened between them, and for Brutus, it seemed much the same as he withered away in his bed.

“That wasn’t your choice alone to make.”

Brutus’s brow furrows and he props himself up to lean against the wooden headboard. His tunic shifts, revealing the gaunt extremity of his lost weight etched in his weak forearms and collarbones. “You have no idea what the last month has been like for me.”

Antony studies him closely, morbidly. There is something upsetting beyond any personal regard seeing Brutus this way. Brutus, who has always been healthy and strong and unperturbed, born from reverent stock that would dwindle but never be extinguished. It was unnatural seeing him cradled by Mors, seeing the lines his face would relax into, which would be embedded into a mask and displayed with the rest. Antony’s arms cross easily, and the irritation is evident on his face. “How could I have known?”

Brutus glances out at the cypresses bowing in the wind. “You couldn't.”

“So tell me.”

“What?”

“Tell me how this happened.”

“Antony, I’m really in no shape to be speaking for so long.” Antony takes the carafe of water that  was resting on the vanity and refills the cup, setting it on the bedside table. He pulls the bench from the foot of Brutus’s bed and brings it to the side and sits attentively. 

“Then try your best anyway.”

Brutus gives him a wary look, and Antony knows he’s giving in. The bed creaks as he pushes  himself up further to sit. He pants at the effort. “Alright,” he concedes, “I’ll tell you."


	2. you, lost and lonely

_ The morning was pale and prematurely warm in the blushing hour of dawn as thin rays of sunlight yawned from hill to hill. The master bedroom was cool in the shade of the north-facing window, a panel of light just beginning to grow and rise from the floor to the wall. Brutus felt Antony shift. The bedframe creaked under the disturbance. Antony turned away from the window and found Brutus in the cool expanse of the bed they shared, slowly beginning his campaign, attacking as all Romans do--swarming and overcoming like a pestilence of locusts. Brutus roused, though much too late to stave Antony off, or even to stiff-arm him and push him back to wander in sleep on his own side of the bed. No, it was much too late for that. _

_ He clung to him. His legs laced through Brutus’s like vines through a trellis, muscular calves tensing and releasing with whatever dreams lingered in Antony’s mind. An arm was thrown haphazardly, clumsily, over Brutus’s belly. Antony’s blood had always run warm, and so his torso and chest were like an oven pressed against Brutus’s side. He grew warmer still when dormant Antony completed his restful invasion as his head came to rest on the hard ridges of Brutus’s flat chest, leaving Brutus with a face full of bergamot perfumed curls and a wheeze in his lungs as Antony’s head rose and fell with Brutus’s chest.  _

Such a choking heat came to mind as Brutus sunk onto a bench, winded. His cheeks were flushed and splotchy, like he had been struck across the face, once on each side, and the blood welled up just beneath the skin. His hand was pressed to his chest, the other holding the dusty stone bench. A few wet coughs were shaken from him, but mostly he struggled to breathe past the limitations of his lungs as if Antony’s thick skull was still bearing down on his diaphragm. Brutus made himself cough, once, twice, and he spat in the grass, winded and panting heavily.

“What’s the matter?” 

“Forgive me.” Brutus’s voice was gravelly, and he cleared his throat.

Two softs hands touched the yielding skin beneath Brutus’s jaw, pressing up gently. Brutus balked initially, but forced himself to calm, tilting his head up at Atticus as he prodded him.“Save your apologies for all those who deserve it, Marcus Iunius. I would much rather you go see a physician.”

Brutus scoffed, and amiably pushed Atticus away. “Whatever for? A momentary bad reaction to a whore’s cheap perfume?”

“You  _ feel _ ill.”

“It is the sickness of this city getting to me, that’s all,” Brutus shrugged. It seemed to pacify Atticus for the time being, who knew well that Brutus was addicted to working himself to the bone to flirt with Mors. He sat on the bench beside Brutus.

“Why don’t you come with me when I leave next week? Greece might be just what the doctor ordered.” It was a tempting offer and coveted too. Gone were the days when childhood excused the gauche nature of Brutus’s pleas to spend his summers with Atticus. Now, as an adult, he no longer asked, but rather waited patiently until he was offered a place there in Atticus’s homely, quiet villa. Those offers were rarer, and opportunities when Brutus could oblige were even rarely still. 

“That won’t do at all. Caesar will be home soon; it’s best that I stay.” It wasn't entirely a lie, although it wasn't Caesar Brutus was lingering for, and he could not say whether staying was the right thing to do. The doubts rippled in his breaths and gently reminded him that his lungs were beginning to drown in roots and flora. 

Atticus studied him. “You say these statements in succession as if they have any bearing on one another. You don’t owe Caesar anything, and even if you did, I’m sure he is an understanding man.”

“It is not so much  _ him _ , as it is me providing a barrier between him and others.”

“Between him and Cicero, you mean.”

“And others.”

“Brutus,” Atticus began. “Marcus….there are a million excuses for you to keep yourself from happiness.”

He bristled, feeling patronized by the interloper. “This is about more than my happiness.”

“What could be more than that?” Atticus scrutinized Brutus plainly, and there was pain in his eyes. “It is a tragedy that you believe so firmly in your own suffering. There are people who would have you believe that bleeding out for this nation is the only way you can be a noble man, but in the end, in this country, it will not be you who decides how you will bleed. It will stab you in the back again and again.” The pine trees sympathized and the wind sailing over the Janiculum made the needles hum in consideration. “And to what end?”

* * *

The night air washed over him, but it wasn’t enough to cool the embers glowing hot with the cherry red of Brutus’s humiliation. His dull fingernails pressed into his palms. His strides were stiff and quick and painful on the harsh stone streets, his back hunched as he made his shameful retreat home in the dark of night, desperate to keep from being spotted. Partygoers and merrymakers were about in the lit streets, jovial and made confident by wine and state-funded party favors. The music and the heady smells of roast boar and malty beer were ineffective on Brutus’s numbness, lost in the churning cogs of his mind.

The intricacy of the webs he spun, the traps he laid in the games he played, the mask of his ancestors he placed over his hyena’s grin, all made maladroit in the face of Marcus Antonius, who saw through Brutus so easily, he was stunned into anger.  _ What else would you expect? _ He asked himself, and had asked himself for many months prior. Antony was there before Brutus was Brutus, back in the visceral printemps of childhood when they were both so formless. There was not much there within them to be loved, and so loving one another was no great toil, and they did it easily. But as the boundaries they were born into took shape and cut deep like fault lines, it became easier to hate. Or rather, hatred became easier for Brutus.

Everyone always said that Antony was a different breed, and this night only proved it. It was the duty of patricians, Servilia always said, to maintain the borders between people within society because the lower classes were simply unequipped to even see the traits of good breeding, let alone possess them. Brutus remembered peering through the cracks in the litter veil and seeing those wide brown eyes shaded by a mop of curly hair staring back. He remembered watching that boy strut through the slums, with dirt on his face and bruises blossoming on his wrists and his knees. He remembered those hands disappearing around a wall when Brutus looked behind him to see who followed. He remembered the sound of peach pits hitting his window; he remembered seeing that dazzling smile for the first time; he remembered the days and the nights spent together; he remembered the magnetism of him, the way radiated self-assurance; he remembered all the ways he was envious of him. It was all a thousand years ago. How could Brutus ever think he could disentangle himself from him?

He understood what Servilia meant when he grew older, but that still wasn’t enough for him to split from Antony once and for all. Brutus chose not to ask why that was and elected to pretend that such a conflict would resolve itself. He averted his gaze from the possibility that there was any true compatibility between them. Rather, he forced himself to think that their social class rendered any sort of substantial connection between them obsolete. Thus, he justified his fraternizing with Marcus Antonius who was still, in many ways, the little boy peering in through the curtains of Brutus’s litter. However, it did not allow for what happened that night. 

He winced to himself, hurrying home even quicker. His mind tried to focus on that one simple task, but he couldn't fight the onslaught of such early memories from the night. Brutus laid, half undressed, pinned beneath Antony, who droned on about his newest assignment far away in Gaul. His smile was grating as he asked if he would be missed. Certain parts of him, Brutus assured, would be missed more than others. Antony laughed and ceased his skilled ministrations. And then he spoke.

Those three words were a knife plunged into Brutus’s breast--a relief, a fatality, and a humiliation all in one. Brutus could have guessed that Antony felt so, but it was not something he ruminated on often. It was silly to think that there was some sort of place for them beyond what they were born into, and Brutus had cut loose those impossibilities and cast them out to sea long ago. It was silly to even dream of it. He took what he could from Antony, but hope was not one of them, and neither was any sort of fulfillment or affection. It would not do, and it could not. Considering a fantasy where such a thing could be allowed was prohibited from Brutus’s mind, but now, Antony had jostled the lock on those manacles, reminding them all that a fair bit of strength could break them free. Brutus had no desire for that. Or rather, he had conditioned himself to be averted to it.  _ It is too difficult. It is not right. It is not what you want. It is not what you were meant for. _ He scrambled out from under Antony, a look of betrayal mirrored on both of their faces. He grabbed his clothes, hands trembling as he did. Anything Brutus might have said was meaningless in the face of impossibility, but still, he spoke anyway:

“Death before disgrace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this has taken so long for me to write lol 2020 in america has rammed itself up my butthole, no spit, no lube, nothin


End file.
